Boston councilors go public with the problems of private ways

After dealing with the issue of Gaza today, Boston city councilors agreed to tackle a more traditional council issue: Potholes, more specifically, the rough shape of the surprising number of private ways the city still has.

The council agreed to a request from Councilor Enrique Pepén (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) to try to figure out how to help residents along private roads who either don't have the money or the desire to fix their roads, such as, he pointed out, Parrott Street and Summer Street Place, which connect Summer and Austin streets in Hyde Park and which, Pepén said, don't have potholes, they have craters, craters that can easily take out an unwary driver's front bumper, he said.

Although there's little reason for the average motorist to go down either short street - which connect the parallel Austin and Summer streets - Pepén and other councilors said they want to figure out how to help residents who might one day need an ambulance or firetruck to get to them on the rutted roads. City Councilor Sharon Durkan (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Mission Hill, Fenway) pointed in particular to Back Street, a fairly long private way that parallels Storrow Drive out back of the condos and apartments of Beacon Street.

Because the road are not owned by Boston, city public-works crews neither maintain them nor plow them in the winter. In his request for a hearing, Pepén wrote:

Many of these private ways in Boston - such as Maple Leaf Drive, Stella Road, and Back Street - have fallen into disrepair as their owners cannot collectively afford nor come to agreements on how to finance repairs that can range in cost from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.

He added that in his four months as a councilor, he has already fielded requests for help from residents on private ways. "I feel hopeless when I say 'sorry, public works cannot fix this road,' " he said.

Councilor Ben Weber, whose West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain district contains an entire neighborhood without a single paved road - the Grove in West Roxbury - said that even if property owners could afford repairs, repairs would take unanimous consent of all property owners, and that might be hard to get with streets with absentee landlords who couldn't be bothered or when even permanent residents just don't want to chip in.

Weber added the issue is not just potholes mangling the wheels of some residents and their guests but public safety - firefighters and EMTs could have as much trouble navigating them as people in cars.

Pepén said Hyde Park is particularly full of these roads, a holdover from the days when Hyde Park was an independent town and most residents still got around in horse-drawn conveyances or on foot. After Boston annexed the town in 1912, it did not then adopt the roads as public.

Councilors Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) and Ed Flynn (South End South Boston, Chinadown, Downtown), whose districts include pieces of the South End, said they are particularly concerned about maintenance of alleys there - and of the water and sewer lines that run along them, the maintenance of which is up to property owners along the alleys, rather than the BWSC as along public roads.